The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(83)

Think of something normal.

Kim Kardashian. Mila Kunis. That what’s-her-name from Sports Illustrated, bikini model, stacked blonde—Kate Upton. He thought of all three at once. Caught his tongue between his teeth and saw them in the shower with him, bare and gleaming and bloodrushed and wet, running hands over his shoulders and lats and ass, one wrapping him up from behind, one nuzzling his neck, the third sinking slowly to her knees.

He knitted his eyebrows, fought to concentrate. He had to hold the scene in his head until it worked. But something kept intruding. A shadow in the corner of the room. A dark figure behind the fogless glass. A black, rapt gaze.

Ryan shuddered, came. He deleted every new message from Martin Cruz for two weeks.

—

Martin Cruz persisted. He wrapped his gifts in brown paper. A baseball card, a video game. Modest treasures, small enough to hide. Then, one day:

“What is this?” Ryan’s mom said, pushing into his room with a brown paper package in her hand, the paper ripped open.

Ryan reached for it, but she pulled back. Cocked her head at the return address.

“Who do you know in Los Angeles?”

“No one,” he said. He grabbed at the package again.

“Oh, no,” she said, holding it against her chest. “You are going to tell me where this came from.”

“Jesus, Mom. The fuck should I know? I can’t like control who decides to send me stuff.”

“Ryan Michael Harbinger, you are going to tell me where this came from. Right. Now.”

“Lemme see it.”

She hesitated.

“Lemme think,” he said.

She handed him the package.

He pulled off the torn paper and tossed it to the floor. Opened the plain white box and reached inside.

A baseball glove. Not just any glove—the new Rawlings Primo. Four hundred dollars. Ryan had three or four gloves already, but this one was expensive to the touch, smooth and supple, saddle-brown Italian leather. Leather laces crisscrossed the fingers and the palm was trimmed in a complex and beautiful braid. He brought the glove to his face and inhaled it. That rich blend of cowhide and lanolin, that miraculous, delicious smell.

“Hello?” his mom said.

“Hold up.” Ryan worked his left hand into the glove. Slid his fingers and thumb into the tight, new grooves. He stretched his palm open and closed, the leather softly creaking. As soon as he broke it in, oiled and stretched it, it would fit perfectly. As if it were made for him. He needed to keep this. His mom was tapping her foot and Ryan stalled, turning the glove over to examine the logo embroidered on the wrist, cycling through lies he could tell her. He wished Nick were there. What would he say?

It came to him. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I forgot. I ordered it. It was, uh, eBay.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How did you pay for it?”

“Uh, Visa? PayPal?”

“Ryan. How many times do we have to have this conversation? That card is for food and emergencies only.”

“I needed a new glove. It was an emergency.”

She stood back and eyed him. “You know, when you do things like this, it makes me wonder whether you can handle this kind of responsibility.” This was an encouraging sign. She had been wondering whether he could handle the responsibility of a credit card for at least the last year and a half.

“Whatever,” Ryan said, shrugging.

“Or maybe we’ll just send this back,” she said. She plucked the white box off the floor and rifled through it. “Wait. What’s this?” She pulled out a small index card, blue, unlined. In black, boxy letters, anonymous as a ransom note, was written a single line:

A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOR EVER. —M.C.

“What is this?” she said. “Who’s M.C.?”

“How am I supposed to know? What, you think I asked for some creepy-ass card?”

She waited for more.

“Maybe it’s, like, his slogan or something,” Ryan said. “Anyway. I can’t return it. The guy said no refunds. If it bothers you that much, I’ll pay you back.”

She laughed. “With what money?”

“Look, I will, okay? Could you just fuckin’ chill?”

Ryan’s mom intruded on his life at every opportunity: logged into his Home Access account to check his homework and grades, typed his papers, emailed his teachers and tutors, made his excuses, selected his college (Pepperdine, where both she and her father before her had gone), colluded with his coaches, gossiped with the mothers of his friends and hookups, made his lunches and monitored his dinners, asked about his exercise, glimpsed him from the hallway as he slept. And the older he got, the more invasive her actions became, as if she could sense his shifting away from her and grew ever more desperate to pull him back. And yet, for all these efforts, she knew nothing. Knew nothing of the whirrings of his brain, the anger in his heart, the desire for he knew not what, or the knot at the floor of his stomach that had been there for as long as he could remember, telling him that something was not right.

At school, he folded up inside himself. He wailed on freshmen. Fucked with girls who worshipped him. Spit words at teachers. His boys, Nick and Flint, had known him so long they didn’t expect him to be any other way. “Man, don’t take it personal, that’s just Ryan,” they’d explain. They said this to show their loyalty and love, they didn’t know it felt like a life sentence.